Things are moving apace for the Nov. 17 Kickstarter launch of Asunder and A Gathering of Chaos. To wit: I have a cover for my novel! Hark and behold!
The story of this cover is a long one, and maybe a little inside baseball, but I actually already HAD one cover for this novel already, which the creators of the Asunder RPG commissioned maybe a year ago or so. It was fantastic art, but once it was done, the Asunder guys and I agreed that it just didn’t match the feel of my book. The art was comic-book-y, for lack of a better term, and Gathering is very much an epic fantasy novel. We wanted something with a little more gravitas.
We kept thinking that they’d commission another artist to take a shot at it, but in the end, the time came to launch the project, and spending even MORE cash on art was not something my friends were prepared to do. So they took an existing image from the Asunder source books (there’s so much beautiful art in these books, seriously) et voilà, brand new cover!
This means that the art doesn’t necessarily reflect a scene from the novel, I’m sorry to say, nor is the woman on the front a perfect match for Nira, who’s the woman it would make the most sense to be looking at a shaft of Pure Light as depicted. But it’s not too far off. No, Nira doesn’t have her sides shaved, and she’s darker skinned than this woman… but you know what? This image has the perfect feel for my book. At the end of the day, that’s what matters the most to me. I cannot say how excited I am to finally see this novel heading out into the world.
Another fun thing: I’m launching a YouTube channel for writers along with my long-time writing group! We are known as The Writer’s Block, and we’ll be talking weekly about the trials of writing and publishing, discussing story ideas, and maybe reviewing the occasional book or movie. Our first cast is up now!
Fun, right? We thought so, although I am open to the idea that we are specialist nerds. We’ll see where it goes. (Downhill, at least in terms of language and joke quality, if history is any indicator.)
That’s it for now. Thanks for checking in!
CAMERON HOPKIN 